


This Poison Comes Instruction Free

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Season/Series 03, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-27
Updated: 2014-11-27
Packaged: 2018-02-27 04:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2679770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will goes to prison, and Maggie is the one who knows to look for MacKenzie in a bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Poison Comes Instruction Free

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Don't even bother asking where this came from. Thanks to Meg, per usual. In theory, takes place after 3.04; I tried to keep things vague to keep it from being Jossed too hard. Trigger warnings for past child abuse, alcoholism. Title is taken from a line in "Disintegration" by Jimmy Eat World.

There’s an art to almost dying. It’s a graceless adrenaline surge, and then the fall, the moment where fate plucks you back so you’re left standing on your toes, so very aware of the plummet that awaited you. And then it subsumes you, the rise and the fall and the mechanics of what saved you, of what didn’t save someone else. You see it everywhere—the wires and the levers and pulleys and wedges of life or death—and eventually, you start drinking.

This isn’t about that.

Will goes to prison, and Maggie is the one who knows to look for MacKenzie in a bar.

“Do you think I ruined him?”

Their glasses clink against the counter, the rims pressed to the greased surface as drops of tequila straggle towards the lacquered wood.

“You’re just scared,” Maggie answers, contemplating the row of top-shelf liquor five feet across from her. But Will’s Amex has already gotten them into enough trouble. “Molly said six months, right?”

It’s the rope they’ve been able to hold onto since Will was served the subpoena. It’s not easy on their palms, but it’s sturdy enough. Six months, for the man who was willing to attach his signature to a three-year non-compete clause.

Mac exhales raggedly. “H. Beatty Chadwick was held for fourteen years.”

“He’s probably eating better in jail,” she replies, pushing her hair behind her ears and wondering how long before Mac would have started pushing that Will quit smoking, how loudly he would have complained. Like Mac doesn’t have a father with a heart condition, like Will has been running his body into the ground since long before Maggie hired herself as his personal assistant and learned his near-Pavlovian response to anything nougat and caramel covered in chocolate.

But like they’re not all poisoning themselves somehow.

Mac signals for another round.

Tequila is a lever. Perhaps a wedge. And the kind Mac is paying for goes down without a burn.

“I just wonder,” Mac says, tongue thick with alcohol. “I mean, if I hadn’t come back—I mean, what’s the good of what we’ve done if he doesn’t come out of this—what if the rest of our lives he’s—and what if he gets out and everything we’ve built is gone? It feels zero sum.”

“Mac?”

They’ve all seen Mac drunk. Drunk, and maudlin, even teary.

But Maggie came knowing what kind of drunk Mac had the capacity to be (wheels and levers and trip-wires, she’s heard the stories from Jim and Mac herself in parcels and pieces) so she won’t leave. She can hold her liquor.

“I’m a terrible wife. Will’s in jail and I’m here fucked up over my own shit.”

Raising their glasses (the bartender’s been pouring them doubles since Maggie sat down next to Mac at the bar, saying nothing except, “I didn’t tell anyone where I was going”) to Will, ostensibly, or maybe Neal who is more fucked up over this by half, or perhaps Pruit and all his goddamn _ideas_ or even the Department of Justice, they throw back their heads until the alcohol clears their mouths, hits the backs of their throats, and is swallowed down.

“You’ve been married forty-eight hours. No one’s great at anything within forty-eight hours.” The glass joins the others, upside down. Two, then four, now six. “I say give it a week. You’re not pregnant, are you—”

“Do you think I’d be drinking in a bloody—”

Maggie hand-waves Mac’s wide-eyed indignance.

“I’m just saying. Midwesterners consider babies a good measure of devotion to your wifely duties.”

“That’s…”

Mac pauses, crinkling her nose before shaking her head.

“You chose to marry Mr. Nebraska.” Clicking her heels against the foot rest of the bar stool, she gesticulates wildly to no part of the room in particular. “Will is farm-bred, and corn-fed, and kind of a hick if you dig any amount of deep at all and _his_ people have lots and lots of babies.”

“Aren’t you from Kansas?”

“We’re different.”

Mac furrows her brows together, leaning her forearms through a quarter inch of grime onto the bar. “How?”

“We grow milo. Wheat. Makes a different kind of liquor.”

The confusion on Mac’s face increases, but Maggie didn’t mean to take them there either but they’re drinking—drunk, truly—in a bar on the Upper West Side and alcohol, she thinks, is definitely a wedge.

“You see, when Will’s dad was beating the shit out of him, he was drunk on white lightning,” she continues, explaining it like it was something she learned in grade school, some special education handed out only to poor rural Midwesterners and Maggie has no idea how to do this, but she almost wants to grab Mac’s shoulders and explain to her that Kansas and Nebraska have been tied together for nearly forever, they entered the Union together and that during opposition research she found out that Will’s paternal great-grandparents made a ton of money running moonshine during Prohibition and it became the family disease the moment the 21st Amendment was ratified in Nebraska.

“When my mom was dragging me across the kitchen floor by my hair, she was drunk on grain alcohol, which to most people is known as vodka if you’re not making it in a still in an out building.” Squinting, she cocks her head. She likes vodka, which is a pity. But they’re drinking tequila, so it doesn’t matter. Eyes focusing back on Mac, she raps her knuckles against the bar, needlessly cavalier. “Important distinction. But I am a New Yorker.”

(After the YouTube incident, her parents pretty much told her she couldn’t come home.)

She’s slurring her words, but that’s not why Mac nearly falls out of her seat before signaling for their fourth round.

“What the _fuck,_ Maggie?”

“Hey, you put me on the opposition research team,” she contends, and then shakes her head, trying to clear it. “I’m sorry, you have me by like six inches and thirty pounds. I am drunk.”

“No, that’s not—Maggie, why didn’t you say—”

Another hand wave.

“I’d rather not.” It wasn’t often, anyway, and she’s seen the ER file on the McAvoy children that was compiled when CPS decided to care for half a fucking minute in 1978. “I’d never have pegged you for tequila.”

Parents who drink too much: fulcrum.

“I drank a lot of military-grade rotgut in my time, but I like the drunk tequila gets me.”

Maggie knows she’s going to wake up with a splitting headache, but whatever works for Mac will work for tonight.

And she thinks she had a speech prepared, once she remembered the name of the bar where Mac’s had her meet her in the middle of the night for a story, more than once. (Only since Election Night, and the new apartment, and before then it would just be hour-long phone calls but Will is a light sleeper so Mac sneaks out instead.) There was a speech. Or at least something she had planned on saying.

“You know, the separation anxiety makes sense. That’s what I came here to—the last time you were separated you nearly died. So I’m just saying, Mac. It makes sense.” Realizing that in her drunk-dazed state that the bartender has just left the bottle in front of them, Maggie places one of her hands over Mac’s. “And you don’t have to drink alone.”

To prove the point, Maggie pours them another round.

Nine, ten—to think there used to be a time where one martini was enough to get her stumbling towards a taxi, she only started _really_ drinking after Daniel and it made her wonder what got her mother started—their glasses hit the bar harder this time, with purpose, and Mac turns her head and looks at Maggie dead on.

“I know Elliot told you that—”

“It doesn’t really matter,” she says, her lips and tongue refusing to form the thoughts in her head in an orderly fashion. “You threw me the go bag and Will is—well, kind of a complete douchebag. Who didn’t want to set me up for failure. I mean, he’s still a complete jackass, but I was always more worried about impressing you anyway.”

Her shrug is belated and somehow overemotional.

Mac looks away, a kindness.

Curling her shoulders forward, Mac knits her hands together in her lap. “Maybe I’ll stop complaining about the soda when he gets out.”

“No, keep complaining, he’ll rot his teeth out of his head.”

“Ease up on the bacon?”

“Yeah.”

Maggie sighs, and Mac echoes it.

“I really don’t want to go home,” she offers when Maggie looks at her askance, questioningly. Mac untangles her fingers and gestures weakly with one hand, towards the East River. “You see, this is how I wound up in Peshawar. I can’t handle an empty bed.”

Blinking, she traces the rim of the shot glass with her fingernail. “Yeah, I just fixed that by having a lot of sex with strangers,” she mutters, wondering what simple machine leads to an orgasm and hastily-donned clothes in an unknown apartment.

Probably not something she should admit to her boss, but whatever.

Mac only laughs, albeit quietly.

“You know, that’s the one thing I never tried.”

“Will did. He probably tried hard enough for the both of you. I had to break up with so many women for him before you came back.”

For a brief moment Mac looks horrified, and then deeply amused and then something else that’s unsure and conflicted before eventually murmuring a quick “Jesus Christ,” under her breath.

“Why didn’t you fire me over the George Zimmerman 911 call?” Maggie asks quietly, observing her closely.

Mac shakes her head unevenly.

“Jim’s a dick.”

“What?”

Biting her lip, Mac leans perilously back and then pitches herself forward, halfheartedly reaching for their bottle of Gran Patron Platinum before abandoning the attempt at misdirection. The bar is half empty, not that it matters, eleven o’clock on a Sunday.

“I never should have let him cover the Romney campaign, make mistakes. But there weren’t any Taliban fighters in Nashua, so…” Voice drifting off, Mac sighs, a completely lopsided motion that moves her entire frame. “I’ve fucked up a lot worse than you Maggie. I mean, I was a fucking mess when I was embedded and it was by the grace of some greater deity that I didn’t get anyone killed, a streak which almost ended with you and Gary—”

“That was _not_ your fault.”

Jabbing her finger into Mac’s upper arm, the slight movement brings how acutely drunk she is to her attention.

“Yeah, that’s the funny thing about being the EP, and you know what, shut up. You tried to resign over Genoa too,” Mac retorts irately, before the heat in her voice is gone again. “God, what if I had told Neal to buy the goddamn computer myself?”

A distinctly annoyed noise escapes her throat, but Mac either doesn’t hear it or elects to ignore it.

Her thoughts churning slowly, Maggie draws a smile across her lips.

“You’d probably handle prison better than Will.”

“I would be fantastic in prison,” Mac agrees almost immediately. “Think of all the time I’d have to work out.” Like each time before, the brief flicker of amusement is tamped out and replaced by a smoky confliction of emotions. “But I already have the badge of honor. Red badge of courage.” Maggie feels herself mirror the frown on Mac’s face. “Attempted to give the last measure of devotion. Started drinking way too early after I got released from the hospital.”

A knife, she thinks, isn’t a simple machine at all. A blade is just a blade, and it hurts, and sometimes you’re lucky and it only nicks your spleen.

“Will is living the first line of his obituary right now,” Mac says after a minute of silence that Maggie watches tick by on the clock hanging over the chalkboard menu across from them.

“And we’re back to morbid.”

“We’re drunk.”

“I’m drunk, you’re—”

“I started before you got here and I haven’t eaten all day.”

“That’ll do it.” The menu has food on it, so Maggie waves the bartender over and orders complete trash on Mac’s tab all the while Mac stares forlornly at their $145 bottle of alcohol and Maggie is fairly close to joking about how Louis XVI was held in the third arrondissement for a little over five months before, well.

Mac doesn’t look like she’s about to tell anyone to eat cake.

“Jim and Hallie broke up. I’m seeing a law professor.”

Mac also isn’t in the mood to meddle. “Separation anxiety?”

“We should keep drinking. Although maybe you should eat something first.”

Slumping down, Mac ignores how her bangs fall into her face. “What if I never came back?”

 _That_ is a simple machine to figure out.

“He’d have OD’d on a mix of narcotics and weed and booze and you would have died in an aptly timed accident six months later,” she answers brusquely. “Or vice-versa. Who gives a fuck, but you didn’t ruin him. You saved him the moment you walked into the bullpen. You saved all of us.”

Silently, Mac covers her face with her hands, lowering herself until her knuckles brush the counter. And just as silently, Maggie counts to ten before placing her hand between Mac’s shoulders, hoping that she’s not fucking this up too badly.

Lifting her head, Mac looks very near tears. “Jim and Hallie broke up?”

“Yeah, he was a dick,” she offers by way of explanation then changes the subject back.  “What does it feel like to die?”

Nodding, Mac quickly brushes her fingers under her eyes.

“For me?” she asks, clarifying.

“Yeah.”

“I only almost died.”

Maggie shrugs. “I think it counts. I didn’t—I mean, the bullet didn’t hit me. I keep wondering if it would have been different if—”

They’re interrupted by the bartender returning from the kitchen with whatever the hell is in the appetizer platter she ordered. Mac looks surprised by its appearance, but says nothing, reaching for a celery stick propped in close to a chicken wing.

“Back when Jim _wasn’t_ a dick he…” she eventually begins, after chewing and swallowing. “He asked me how far I’d go to be saved. And I corrected him. _Forgiven._ And he looked at me and said, ‘well, forgiveness would save you, right?’ And he was right.”

Mac gives a watery laugh, and then shakes her head again, as she’s been doing all night and Maggie marks that down for future reference as an indicator that Mac is drunk.

Breathing in deeply, and then breathing out shakily she continues. “Dying was… you learn how far you’ll go and you learn that it isn’t enough.”

“Is that why you came back to ACN?”

Mac ignores her question, looking directly at her and answering something else. “I’ve been putting off a breakdown for seven years now.”

“Well, I hope you don’t cut your hair,” she says with a shrug, popping a potato skin into her mouth, cringing when it’s far too hot and burns the roof of her mouth. Chewing and swallowing quickly she covers her mouth with one hand and grabs the Patron away from Mac with the other. “Are you... waiting to be saved?”

Mac’s smile takes a decidedly sardonic turn.

“By your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”

Clutching the tequila to her chest in retaliation, she says, “Okay I’m taking the bottle away from you until you eat all the mozzarella sticks off this plate.”

Pouting, Mac looks down at the stack of deep-fried and battered cheese.

“I think this is irony.”

“He’s in jail. He won’t know.”  

“Jesus?” she quips, quirking an eyebrow up towards her hairline.

“For the love of—” Nearly laughing, Maggie grabs a mozzarella stick off the plate and shoves it into Mac’s open mouth. “Eat.”

Slowly eating one, and then another, Mac seems to remember the benefits of putting more into her body than clear liquor. Within five minutes she’s demolished the mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce, turning her appetite next onto the chili cheese fries.

(If only she’d let someone do this for her after she came home from Uganda, but she’d been so goddamn concerned with appearances like her mother taught her. Appearances and expectations and she’d already fucked up with the viral video and if she was crazy on top of it—

There were a handful of staffers who wanted to come with her tonight, but she had told them all to keep working on getting through the documents, glared at Jim and Don until they backed her up and promised to Charlie that she’d report back.

Not that he found self-medication anything but commendable.)

Trying to be amenable, Maggie pours numbers eleven and twelve before capping the bottle again. Smiling in a purely exhausted way, Mac tips hers back, drinking it in halves before wearily placing it on the table. She’s quiet for a long moment, and then, blinking rapidly:

“I’m waiting for it to stop feeling like… we went from heading towards an engagement to me on the opposite side of the world in a little more than three weeks, and then from not talking to running _News Night_ together in just a few _days_ _,_ and then ending everything again to engaged in sixty seconds. And _then_ we went from planning this big wedding to suddenly married and now he’s in prison, probably forever and I’ll be sleeping alone for the rest of my life in a stupid apartment we were—”

Maggie very nearly makes a reference as to how the Vera Wang bridesmaids dresses are non-refundable, but Mac had truly stayed to her promise of picking a gown that they could all wear again, even if it was a bitch and a half to find a dress that looked good on all of them since Will’s sisters are leggy and stacked and blonde and Mac’s are leggy and stacked and brunette and Sloan is, well, _Sloan_ and she's just Maggie. 

“You could have the breakdown now if you want. Neal won’t be back in the country until Tuesday.”

“Will’s been in prison for like, two days,” Mac protests, carding her hands through her hair before bracing her elbows on the bar and her chin in her hands, looking sideways at her. “If I’m having a breakdown by day two that’s just weak.”

“I won’t tell anyone. And we already have the bottle.”

She picks it up again to prove the point, sloshing around the contents of the half-empty container.

Mac purses her lips together, tracing the honeybee on the front.

“What do they make tequila from?”

It takes Maggie a moment to remember the answer. Not that she’d know from her fairly tame days at college, or from her childhood. But last year she thinks that question came up, considering the hellish hangover tequila gives her, like her Midwestern born and bred body can’t handle anything made from a crop produced outside the breadbasket of America.

“The blue agave plant.”

She’s quiet again.

“Whiskey and vodka?”

“I mean, we had to rotate crop otherwise the fields went fallow,” Maggie says with a shrug. “But pretty much.”

“I wanna go home,” Mac replies, signaling the bartender, pulling out her wallet and the Black Amex card that’s gotten Will into so much trouble.

“Okay,” she chirps, hoping she sounds adequately cheery, or supportive, or whatever Mac needs at the moment as her life comes crumbling down around her.

Scrawling her name onto the credit slip, Mac looks at her.

Maggie leans forward, waiting.

“Get up, you’re coming with me,” Mac sighs softly, pulling her purse over her shoulder.

There’s an art to almost dying. It’s a graceless adrenaline surge, and then the fall, the moment where fate plucks you back so you’re left standing on your toes, so very aware of the plummet that awaited you. And then it subsumes you, the rise and the fall and the mechanics of what saved you, of what didn’t save someone else. You see it everywhere—the wires and the levers and pulleys and wedges of life or death—and eventually, you start drinking.

But this isn’t about almost dying.

It’s almost feeling like you’re dying and living anyway.

Which is what Maggie tries to tell herself the next morning, anyway, waking up in the bed in Will and Mac’s guestroom with her head on Mac’s shoulder feeling like her skull is trying to rend itself in half.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
